Minor Break
As is somewhat obvious by the lack of posting, things have been somewhat busy in the “real world” and as such I’ve taken to writing less and less about the things I see an hear. Typically I would write before work or at home, but I’ve started a new job and the new job requires, for now, quite a bit of writing in its own, so I have less time to devote to writing about music.
There has also been the creeping suspicion that I’ve not been doing the acts I’ve wanted to cover any sort of justice. The only way to get better at a thing is to do it, but the problem is that it feels as though I’m fighting dragons when I’d have trouble trying to wrestle kittens. The stuff I want to say and the stuff I think rarely makes it to the screen in any sort of acceptable or recognizable way and I think that I’m writing more words and saying less when I should be using less words to say more, but as I have had little experience outside of unrelated schooling (where I took creative writing which taught me erroneously that “more is more”).
The hardest thing about writing this blog is that there’s little feedback beyond “that’s good” or “you suck, fuck you, die!” except from the artists that I cover who are usually quite pleased with what they read. While I say that I write KotGB for my own amusement that’s not quite true.
I write about music because I’ve always loved music and have tried to take what were essentially emails to friends saying “you should listen to this here’s why” or “I saw this band you may want to see them in the future” and try to take that to a larger scale. Yet I haven’t even had time to really digest a lot of what I’m devouring.
I’m currently absolutely enthralled with the rise of new triangulation of newer, darker music which trades in traditional gothic industrial trappings even as they reject the specifics of what those genres devolved into //TENSE//, Black Bug, Black Math, Defektors, White Car and similar artists all providing a welcome antidote to the rise of -wave, dream, and -gaze acts.
That’s not even touching what’s happening in the amazing world of what’s loosely termed “post-garage” or “post-dubstep.” The genre without a name that is essentially the continuation of the UK Hardcore Diaspora, now that people are abandoning the cul-de-sac that was Dubstep and going through old genre permutations as the producers try to find the how they will move forward.
It’s as exciting as when all those DnB heads in 1999 – 2000 said “Fuck techstep, let’s rave ’til dawn” and we saw the wonderful updating of past themes and re-working of Hardcore classics which went on to eventually give us such things as Liquid (and horrible things like Drumstep, but the less said about that, the better. Seriously. Please stop mentioning it. You’re making me cry).
So this isn’t “good-bye” this is “see you in a few weeks.”
I’ll continue to post in smaller doses threads of thought at @kotgb on twitter.
The Octopus Project @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 10/8/10
all photos courtesy of the amazing Edwina Hay
On Friday night (October 8, 2010), The Octopus Project played Music Hall of Williamsburg in Brooklyn, NY. I wasn’t familiar with their brand of electronic psychedelica, having only really heard Hexadecagon thanks to their PR firm, the always-accommodating Big Hassle Media, who sent along word of their opening slot for Starfucker.
Hexadecagon touched upon minimalist composers, video sequences and “happiness seizures” which intrigued me. It all sounded a bit Dan Deacon-ish, but in doing some further digging, it wasn’t like that at all. On the surface it could be; electro acoustic compositions that push your sense of time to a near stand still as dissenting loops are pushed together into a whole, where the shape of the room changes the sounds you hear and how you react.
Happiness Seizure isn’t far off, to be frank. From the opening notes of the first song, “Fuguefat,” I had a smile on my face as large as the room, and any sort of “professional demeanor” was gone with the rushes of ecstasy washing over the room and clapping and cheering broke out which each chord change. Someone brought in a sack of glowstick necklaces and threw them to all corners of the room providing little pinpoints of participants in neon colors which caught and complemented the sounds from the stage as their wearers bounced in time, extendending the show’s tense visual flavor.
That visual flavor was, unfortunately, a bit muted. The sequence of video that the band had brought along was projected onto thick black curtains behind the act, so that the sequenced animations were not visible, denying the crowd the chance to see what other cities got to experience. This video animation was complemented by an amp stack which was wrapped in Christmas lights then draped in a white sheet with eyes made of tape and another stack was covered in geometric reactive stripes whose back-lit black light made every thing on stage as strong as the brief snatches of color dancing in the crowd.
Continue reading The Octopus Project @ Music Hall of Williamsburg 10/8/10
The Octopus Project – Hexadecagon
Wet Gold – The Octopus Project from Zellner Bros. on Vimeo.
Austin Texas’s Octopus Project’s most recent album / art project / sound collage Hexadecagon is flat out fucking amazing. George Gershwin meets Holy Fuck at a field party and a drug fueled grope session on someone’s sequencer breaks out. The touch points referenced by the band really exposes the depth of my ignorance as Terry Riley and Steve Reich, minimalist composers are pegged by name, but the album can’t be described as minimal.
It’s purely maximal.
Piano loop after piano loop, bass line and bass line and drums and drums and drums meet and discretely depart creating not really songs and not really tracks but assigning the term “composition” to these really takes away the playfulness residing in each part of the album.
Tomorrow night, they’re teaming up with Portland’s Starfucker to bring their intensely visual experience to Music Hall of Williamsburg. I’ll be covering it with photos.
Teengirl Fantasy – ’7 AM’
I’ve long been a fan of the Oberlin College duo, Teengirl Fantasy. I first saw them perform during the 2008 CMJ Music Festival in a community art center at 1 PM. Logan Takahashi and Nick Weiss were sitting on the ground with their keyboards in front of them and their eyes didn’t leave their instruments once. We, the audience of about 5 people, were totally ancillary to anything they were doing.
From their new instruments, waves and washes rose up over us, transporting us along the sparse yet complex soundscapes taking us for a ride like the best of ambient music, transporting us out of the dirty concrete floored space pulling us along to Arcturus. They tore loose elements from various dance traditions that fired conflicting synaptic responses, an element from a house classic here, an arpeggio from “Sandstorm” there. Yet, each was sublimated to the music of the subconscious, the music of memories and nostalgia, closer to Shinichi Osawa’s Mondo Grosso than Paul Van Dyke.
They didn’t have any music for sale, so I left empty-handed but not empty-headed. Over the next year, I’d get a chance to see them again, on a better system, making music that was more confident but no less deep and expansive. The TGIF CDR that came in a Ziploc baggie was chillwave before chillwave became the codified commodity for Brooklyn summers and Absolut Vodka parties. TGIF was dance aware but not slavishly devoted to the conventions of those genres.
This translated to their live work and each show continued to entertain and enrapture me. The release of last year’s “Portofino” single on Rough Trade was practically a blue print for a genre that heretofore was the domain of acts like Panda Bear and Dan Deacon’s less manic phases; minimal in construction but frantic and sweaty in those elements, a contradiction in speed and tone.
It is with a near slavish devotion that I consumed any bit of news regarding Teengirl Fantasy’s album 7AM for Mekon, from the frankly brilliant first single “Cheaters,” to actually holding it in my hands yesterday. It is worth the wait.
Is dream house taken as an affectation? If not, let’s apply it here; liberally.
Nick and Logan continue to make excellent electronic music that isn’t made for the dance floor but isn’t so distant as to be IDM in the Warp records mode.
In addition to the spacey spectral house such for which they may be most known, they have dance abstractions such as the percussive heavy “Koi Pond” and tonal mood piece “In the Rain,” whose chimes dance across the track like a gentle sun shower. Tracks such as “Make the Move” and “Forever the Feeling” give into that earlier frantic relaxation Ketamine feeling of earlier releases from the duo. The vocal tracks “Cheaters” (working with Love Committee’s “Cheaters Never Win”) and “Dancing In Slow Motion” both show the complimentary sides to Teengirl Fantasy.
“Cheaters” is a Grown N Sexy version of early Chicago House, 808 kicks and snapped snares left out in the rain while “Dancing in Slow Motion” speaks directly to early 1980s Latin Freestyle in an anything goes pure diva house singing from Shannon Funchess (Light Asylum, !!!). I am hoping for huge floor-filling remixes for “Dancing in Slow Motion” as it speaks directly to my Johnny Vicious / Masters At Work love of hands in the air abandon.
Teengirl Fantasy’s 7 AM is not perfect, but it is a step in the right direction. There isn’t a huge deviation to their sound as much of 7 AM sounds like much of the TGIF demos, yet what evolution is at hand is wonderful to behold. Get this album, now.
The New Belle & Sebastian Track…
could really use a comma in that title somewhere.
Belle & Sebastian – “Come On Sister” by Some Kind of Awesome
The Howlies coming back with Stunned!
The Howlies are set to follow up their 2009 debut album Trippin’ With Howlies with a slightly dirtier EP. Stunned sees them continue to evolve their combination of 1950s and 60s pazz and jop. Not quite dirty enough to be embraced by the garage punk set, but too old fashioned be heralded by the world at large, much to the loss of both scenes.
BUT!
It’s not too late to get hip to the hep as the Atlanta four-piece makes its way back to New York in time for CMJ to support their new EP ‘Stunned’ which you can currently stream for free for now. A limited edition physical release will be sold through the Howlies’ website and distributed to a select few record stores. While you’re there, download the digital 45 for “Tie Me Up, Throw Me Down” for free.
Eight dollars Americano will get you the 10″ vinyl version of Stunned and the site above will tide your slavering need for more Howlies. Get on it.
The Ladies – ‘Six More Reasons to Hate The Ladies’
Six More Reasons to Hate The Ladies is like waking up after a party to find that you’ve pissed the couch only to find out that you didn’t piss the couch, someone else did and you just slept in it.
Scuzzy, dirty, filthy, snotty, bratty intentionally obnoxious and you fucking love it.
(NSFW Cover after the jump)
Continue reading The Ladies – ‘Six More Reasons to Hate The Ladies’
These Are Powers and Gatekeeper Free Show
I really liked Gatekeeper’s album Optimus Maximus when I got a hold of it but have missed several opportunities to see them live due to scheduling or financial issues. Since I’m not booked for this night, I may try to make it out. I don’t particularly care for These Are Powers so I may dip out before then, but hey, it’s free regardless. Here’s the text that accompanied the graphic.
JOIN US FOR THE TIGER FULL MOON PARTY
THESE ARE POWERS
GATEKEEPER
DJs FINGER ON THE PULSE
@ UNION POOLTHURSDAY SEPTEMBER 23rd, DOORS @ 7PM
Free Show Brought to You by Tiger Beer
UNION POOL IS LOCATED AT 484 UNION AVE IN BROOKLYN, NY 11211
RSVP REQUIRED: rsvp@deathandtaxesmag.com
“The German metal band Rammstein even sold a set of sex toys.”
Rob Walker at NYT has an interesting article on the current encroachment of merchandise as income object for musicians rather than music. The thought of musician now having to add skills of being a curator of objets d’art in addition to booking, marketing, social media networking, and things that are no longer important; like being a musician.
Personally, the thought of object as artifact of the artist doesn’t really appeal to me. I don’t have a ton of space, and what space I have is taking up by books and records already. The thought of purchasing “the MDBC Totem, and it looks like a spooky, monolithic building, about seven inches high and made of bonded aluminum finished with a ‘gun-metal patina.’” for display in my apartment for $125 is just kooky. That’s 10-12 punk records, shipped to my door.
I can see wanting to own deluxe boxed sets, vinyl alternatives and books, but I have trouble trying to conjure up the world where I’d want to extend my adoration of a rapper to a branded coffee product.
One thing that I found to be oddly missing from the article was the wealth of Insane Clown Posse merchandising that exists.